ITALY

capital : ROMA

population :
58.1 million

surface :
301,230 sq km kilometers

Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a Southern European country. It comprises the Po River valley, the Italian Peninsula and the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. It is shaped like a boot and for this reason Italians commonly call it lo Stivale ("the boot") or, due to its prevalent peninsular geographical nature, la Penisola ("the Peninsula").
Italy was home to many well-known and influential European civilizations, including the Etruscans, Greeks and the Romans. For more than 3,000 years Italy experienced migrations and invasions from Germanic, Celtic, Frankish, Lombard, Byzantine Greek, Saracen, Norman, and Angevin peoples, and was divided into many independent states until 1861 when Italy became a nation-state.